Etruscan Artemis and the unexpected vowel change

Let's retire Bronze Age Mediterranean phonology for a while and talk about Etruscans and their deities again. On page 57 of The religion of the Etruscans‎ (2006), Erika Simon explains to us that Etruscan Artume ~ Aritimi, the goddess of hunt and lady of the moon reknowned for her superior archery, is directly taken from Greek Artemis (Άρτεμις) and that the cult extends back to the Neolithic. This description of her origin is ridiculously brief and, to add, ridiculously vague as it oversteps many millennia and distinct cultures in a single sentence. It doesn't seem to trouble her that the vowels have changed radically (eg. Greek epsilon to Etruscan u) since she doesn't explain any of it at all. That vowel change is a rather unavoidable detail if she wishes to make her published words stand the test of time. Down the rabbit hole we go, Alice...

I'll get straight to the chase and solve one riddle that obscures the problem above. I've come to realize that the purported Artume ~ Aritimi alternation in Etruscan is one of many modern myths created by idle theorists. Artume is sufficiently attested as the one and only Artemis in ET AH S.4 and ET Vs S.6. Her name appears to have been carelessly confused with that of a separate etymon however, an Etrurian city which the Etruscans called Aritim and which in Latin is called Arretium. Despite this knowledge, we've hardly solved the vowel change riddle yet.

If we only assess the problem from within the specialized bubble of the narrow Etruscan field, internal -u- before bilabial m can easily be explained away as a reduced form of original *-e-. This happens many times in Etruscan and so it would seem the problem is solved, right?

On a Minoan Linear A artifact (HT Wc 3024.a), John Younger transcribes the symbols as A-RA-TU-ME replete with a picture of an archer. To confirm, Raison & Pope on page 150 in Corpus transnuméré du linéaire A explains further: "Sept impressions de sceau sur le pourtour, dont une, semble-t-il, oblitérée délibérément (archer de profil gauche faisant la génuflexion, 112 de Levi)." Translated into English, it reads: "Seven seal impressions on the perimeter, where one, it seems, obliterated deliberately (archer facing left bending at the knees, 112 of Levi)."

If Younger's transcription is sound, I can't help but wonder now about Artemis and the Keftian connection.

Minoan citynames with an Egyptian accent

John Strange (in Caphtor/Keftiu: A new investigation, p.21) shows Minoan citynames written out in Egyptian as they were known during the reign of Amenhotep III in the 14th century BCE. The picture below is courtesy of this reference via Google Books.

I noticed something in these lists that involves the way that these names are spelled in Egyptian characters. It has me wondering about whether people are transcribing things quite right. Based on the common transliterations I see, it would appear that all people see in these lists is alphabetic writing of the foreign names. I personally see in this a mixture of alphabetic and rebus writing.

Notice #3 (Kydonia), #8 (Kythera) and #10 (Knossos)? The three all begin with the symbol of upraised arms followed by a single stroke. Normally this is the way of writing kȝ 'soul', often written out "the Budge way" as ka to avoid the pesky issues concerning vocalism in a script that normally didn't write vowels (except in foreign names like the above, of course). The actual pronunciation in Middle Egyptian was likely *kuʔ. It just so happens that a syllabic reading of this symbol as ku suffices excellently when sounding out the names Kydonia and Kythera. Knossos can also be read this way if we keep in mind that the stress is placed on the second syllable. What I find interesting is not only that we can get away with reading this out syllabically based on a literal reading, but also that this symbol of all things was chosen, a symbol clearly of religious importance. It'll relate to what I write below in a minute.

Also look at #8 (Kythera) again. We see a mouth symbol followed by another one of those strokes. In everyday writing, this would write the literal word for "mouth" and was probably pronounced *rāʔa or *rāʔ by this time (> Coptic ro). Just as before, a syllabic pronunciation based on the literal reading, ra, gives us precisely the vocalism we need in the name Kythera. Interesting, no?

Now back to the religious symbolism in the first set of examples, it continues on in #2 where we see another spiritual glyph starting off what is thought to either spell out Phaistos or Pisaia, a bird which normally represents a second aspect of our tripartite being, the ba (according to Budge spelling, at least). Again, the actual pronunciation was slightly different, probably *baʔ, but in this case Budge's spelling is close enough to reality. If we can get away with syllabically reading ku and ra, why not also ba here? If so, the alternative reading suggested, Pisaia, is not possible. Yet while this works in favor of the reading Phaistos, this interpretation also remains problematic if going by the Mycenaean name *Phaistós (PA-I-TO).